Vimeo launches Flash-free Universal Player for iPhone, iPad

Video sharing site Vimeo has launched a new embedable HTML5 video player aimed at Apple's iPhone and iPad.

Vimeo adds embedded 'Universal' playback

Vimeo launched an HTML5-based video playback site at the beginning of the year, but it is now enabling users to embed its videos with a new Universal Player that can detect the viewer's client and provide optimized video that is compatible with it.

Embedded Vimeo videos previously required Adobe Flash for playback. Using the new Universal Player, Vimeo can now deliver lower bandwidth videos to mobile clients, and send H.264 video to HTML5 devices such as Apple's iPhone and iPad.

In order to serve mobile video to iOS users (or other mobile platforms such as Android or the Palm Pre), Vimeo users must have a paid Plus account (which costs $60 per year) and activate mobile versions of their videos. Vimeo Plus accounts also provide 5GB of storage, higher quality video encoding, HD video embedding, ad-free videos, and other premium features.

A report by USA Today cited Vimeo vice-president of product and development Andrew Pile as saying the effort took nearly five months. "The videos will be playable in any browser," Pile said, "And work with future platforms as well."

Apple's Flash disruption

"While it was relatively easy to build an HTML5 player that worked on Vimeo.com," the company says, "making an experience that could live and work anywhere is actually a big undertaking. For example, we had to write several new video players to replace what used to be just one: behind the scenes there is a new Flash player, new Flash mobile player, new iPad player, new iPhone player, and new HTML5 player. And we expect to add more.

"It used to be you could rely on Flash to perform the same way everywhere, but now HTML5 and embed code act very differently from browser to browser and device to device. We've spent the past few months evaluating different options and testing quite a lot."

Google's YouTube brought Flash-free video playback to the iPhone in 2007 through Apple's bundled YouTube app, but its HTML5 web-based videos arrived only earlier this year, just days before Vimeo. Embedded Google videos can play without Flash using ClickToFlash on the Mac desktop, and play through Apple's YouTube app when encountered on iOS devices like the iPhone.

Google has backpedaled on its ambitious plans for HTML5 and H.264 playback somewhat after buying On2 and releasing its VP8 video codec as WebM. It has also cozied up to Adobe to prominently promote Android and the forthcoming Chrome OS as a Flash-compatible platforms.

Wow, you guys have been late lately. I read about this over 12 hours ago on another site. A few of your stories this week I've read on other sites 12-24 hours earlier and some stories you still don't have. Is this site run by a group of dedicated writers or is it like Digg and articles are user created/submitted?

Wow, you guys have been late lately. I read about this over 12 hours ago on another site. A few of your stories this week I've read on other sites 12-24 hours earlier and some stories you still don't have. Is this site run by a group of dedicated writers or is it like Digg and articles are user created/submitted?

It's not like it's THAT important. Maybe they got something good for us coming?...hopefully...

Wow, you guys have been late lately. I read about this over 12 hours ago on another site. A few of your stories this week I've read on other sites 12-24 hours earlier and some stories you still don't have. Is this site run by a group of dedicated writers or is it like Digg and articles are user created/submitted?

I've noticed this too. I haven't seen any news that was broken here first for a long time. Several other sites do seem to consistently have that 12-24 hr jump that you mention. Too bad, this used be the go to source for me.

I wish there was a single video format that worked on all devices, autodetected bandwidth for top performance, and didn't eat up CPU. A way to have the video in an auto-adaptable resolution would also be nice, but I'll settle for compatibility across platforms. Today when you cut something together and export it, you're still not done. You've got to export it several ways and it eats up time and space like a black hole.

Think about how much more room google would have on YouTube's servers if it didn't have to carry like 12 versions of every inane video they have. They could spread the Bieber fever pandemic without consuming all the resources that it takes for all the disk space (and back up disk space) that YouTube has and consume far less electricity to keep all those bad boys running. I know they mostly run renewable power, but does Vimeo? Not trying to hate, I love Vimeo.

While I'm happy that html5 is being offered now, I hope it becomes universal soon so this business can stop. It's pretty pointless if you think about it.

It used to be you could rely on Flash to perform the same way everywhere, but now HTML5 and embed code act very differently from browser to browser and device to device. We've spent the past few months evaluating different options and testing quite a lot.

This is why Flash exists in the first place, because the standards committees take too long to decide on how best to make their spec and it ends up with things missing anyway.

If it was decided that Webkit was the new standard then the problems wouldn't exist because everyone would see 100% W3C compliant rendering and content publishers would target a single engine instead of 5 or more.

But Adobe choosing not to make a suitable Flash player for mobile devices for over 3 years has forced publishers to develop alternate players, which is a hugely beneficial thing. Over the next year or two, Flash will stop being that comfort-zone that people cling on to so they can delay moving to HTML 5.

The way I read this is that HTML5 is not all it is cracked up to be and that everyone's favourite iDevice may not work with Youtube.

Meanwhile, on the good ship Android, with captain Froyo at the helm, the Chief Steward, Flash 10, continues to look after all the passengers.

Then you read it wrong. And flash player lite, on my HTC Android phone works for about yen percent of flash content. Flash video playback is awful.

Html5 isn't new technology it's a new standard for an existing coding language. People seem to misunderstand this. All you need to create html5 content is a basic text editor. It is a newly emerging standard, it is free and anyone can learn it.

The way I read this is that HTML5 is not all it is cracked up to be and that everyone's favourite iDevice may not work with Youtube.

Meanwhile, on the good ship Android, with captain Froyo at the helm, the Chief Steward, Flash 10, continues to look after all the passengers.

You mean the 2 or 3 Android handsets that somewhat run Flash content but don't magically make content designed for mouse+kb interaction usable on a touchscreen device? All but a few carefully picked Adobe demo's I have seen of Flash on a phone have been outright terrible, just watching people trying to control typical Flash applications on a video makes me cringe. Which leaves only non-interactive content (=banners) and video (=only served using Flash because of historical reasons) as 'good' arguments for having Flash on your phone.

Just have a look how full-screen or embedded HD H264 video from Youtube or Vimeo runs on an iPad/iPhone, then make that same judgement on how HTML5 is not all that cracked up compared to Flash Video. There's no reason Android handsets couldn't benefit from the same smooth video content that is perfectly integrated into websites, instead of loaded through some kind of binary plugin controlled by Adobe. Flash is holding everyone back when it comes to online video, including Android and other mobile OS's